


Coded Files

by Celirian



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Character Study, Multi, Vignette, lost light fest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-07-29 16:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 22,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7691821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celirian/pseuds/Celirian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The logs, thoughts, and writings no is supposed to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Requiem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In loo of the Lost Light Fest these are my contribution in form of writing. They're more character studies than anything and the majority do take place after issue 55 of More Than Meets the Eye.  
> 
> SO SPOILERS MAY BE PRESENT
> 
> Edit: Even though the fest is over I will still be updating this from time to time. Thanks for all the support I've gotten so far =)

**Cyclonus**

I am certain I will find it very difficult to find anything more delusional than a hymn for the dead. I know I can be certain of this because I have traveled more than the majority of the universe that is within our reaches and I have even been beyond - to places we are not supposed to dwell. Places that aren’t even supposed to exist. Through these travels I can indefinitely tell you three things that are more certain than the number of millennia I have watched pass with my own eyes because, over time, I may have lost count of those.

First: nothing is nonexistent. If you think it’s impossible it is very much probable. If you think it shouldn’t ever be, it already is. If you cannot comprehend a paradox that loops through your mind like a planet that revolves around its sun, be sure that it’s laws and physics are concrete in their own ways.

We will never fully understand this existence; life, death and all the ripples of law and chaos that surround these concepts at all times. We cannot and if you try to it will surely drive you mad. This also is something I have witnessed multiple times. It nearly consumed my mind as well, but perhaps, when you get to a point where you’ve outlived everyone that’s lived it is an inevitable phase that a weary and tired soul goes through.

Second I can tell you there is nothing cherish-able in a memory. Holding onto a picture or an idea or a vivid detailed fact about something or someone you love will only end up disappointing you. You know your friend and the way they look, they act, they laugh, they cry, they hate; the way they love. You know what your home looks like. You know the sky lines, the mountains, the lakes, the breezes that carried you over vast valleys for the first time; you know the smell of the cities and the absolute silence of the stars above you and the deafening roar of life under your feet. It was just yesterday that you were there and they were next you. It was mere hours ago, it was a fleeting second. A memory.

Then, you turn and nothing is like it should be. There are no cities and the mountains have all crumbled to dust. The silence of space is louder than the wailing of loss in your mind and no one is standing next to you. There is blood on your hands and nothing is what it should be because a memory is a lie of how things were and not how things are or ever will continue to stay.

A memory is absolute and nothing in this universe is really that.

Finally, I can tell you the most astonishing thing I have discovered: _everything will surprise you_.

The first time you see something so magnificent your mind couldn’t comprehend that it wasn’t dreaming. The first time you take comfort in a touch and the first time you know what it’s like to be truly alone.

The absolute and total unfathomable pain that comes from loss and the utter hopeless you believe you can never escape from. Then, the realization that you are still standing afterwards.

When you discover how pathetic, short, and unimportant life is and the childlike awe you have when someone proves that everything you’ve come to believe over the ages was all wrong.

That one day you will disappear from existence and maybe someone will sing you a requiem, but you won’t hear it and that, that is okay because you don’t need to hear it. You don’t need memories or laws or physics or silly song to those whose remains have long since gathered amongst the stars. Surprise will come when you realize you are no longer looking for death and that death has long since passed you by.

When you know, _know_ , the only thing you need is for a small, forgotten hand, to take your own in the middle of a fire and show you how beautiful the flames are as you burn together.


	2. Weathered

 

 **Rodimus -** **Captain of the Lost Light**

I am not okay.

These four words are harder for me to say than thank you. Harder than believing the words I trust you. Harder than owning up to I’m sorry. 

I’ve always been the strong one. I’ve always been the one that’s had it together. I don’t cry. I don’t whine. I don’t take a day off. I’m the solider, ever fighting. I’ve always been the one that laughs in the face of tribulation. I’ve faced the unthinkable and came out the other end in relatively one piece. I recovered fast. I moved past it. I never fell apart entirely.

But really, I just used cheap scotch tape to keep ever expanding cracks from coming apart. It was a feeble attempt at a cover up. It doesn’t take long to weather down thin plastic and adhesive that was never really sticky in the first place. One storm comes and I’m surprised it held. Another came I’m sure I’ll break. But I don’t. I won’t let it happen.

I’ve always been the okay one. I can’t let that go now. I can’t _not_ be me. I can’t be the one to admit my paint is chipping and my seams are succumbing to rust. I have weathered this much, I can do it again. It didn’t get me down then.

No. No. No. No. _No!_

But it did.

Slowly the outside elements leaked in and while I could redo my paint job, I was actually fading from the inside out. Ignoring the tug in my gut, the weariness of my soul, and the degradation of my facade. Suddenly the trivial things in life became serious and the serious became over whelming. The over whelming started to drown me and I found myself suddenly in a world I never remembered living in.

Paranoia claimed my mind. Little noises in the silence and shadows in the corners became the monsters I defeated long ago. Footsteps behind me in the brightly lit hallways became the nightmares I had woken up screaming from the night prior. Dreams became torments and instead of respite, sleep became a thing I feared.

I start second guessing myself on things I knew I was good at. I had done them a million times before. Why was I scared to do it this time? Why did I think _this_ was the time I’d fail? I’d failed before and I had gotten over it. I learned and moved on. Why was the idea of it happening again so terrifying? Why did I want to _run_?

Why now? What finally gave way? Was it one thing that finally fell lose and I didn’t notice until I was already in over my head? Or did everything just suddenly fall apart like a levy taking on too much water. I couldn’t tell you. It felt like it happened over night even though thinking back on it the signs had been there for a very, very long time.

I just didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want others to see, even though they knew. They knew and they tried to help. They tried to make me see it too, but I ignored them. I told them they were wrong, that they were the ones lying about me. I miss them, but I pushed them away. I want to tell them they were right, but that’s admitting that I was wrong.

Fuck this pride.


	3. String(ed together) Theory

**Brainstorm - AKA The Ship’s Genius  
**

Or…

Maybe I’m just as un-genius like as everyone says I am. Not that they _don’t_ say I’m a genius. They admit I’m brilliant. I over hear them even though their confessions always follow up with “Don’t tell him I said that” or “I’ll never admit that to his face”, because why compliment someone who already knows?

Although, I can talk a lot, say a whole bunch of things no one will understand (well everyone but one or two others will understand), but the truth is? They will never understand why I’m a genius. It’s not because of smarts. I mean, I am smart; book smart, study smart, science smart, and inventor extraordinaire. I just know things that others don’t.

A lot of others are like that too. So, why aren’t we all geniuses?’ It’s not about being smart or knowing things or knowing how to use the things you know (those are all very useful skills don’t get me wrong) it’s about the motivation you use to put those things into action. That’s why no one will understand why I’m a genius because they will never understand why I use my genius.

Why I take what I know and use it in ways that make people question my intelligence. My smarts. My morality (which okay I admit I don’t have much of after all the things I’ve done). All people see is a traitor and a villain. Someone they can’t trust. Someone who did strange, terrible (miraculous if you ask me) things and for clearly selfish reasons. 

Because when you don’t understand, when you _can’t_ understand all the whos or whats or whys then everyone jumps to the logical conclusion: selfishness.

Now the real truth, a truth that is much more absolute than any science or math or quantum physics that exist or will exist once I discover it, is that I am selfish. There will be nothing more concrete a statement in the universe than that. Aside from Perceptor saying I am brilliant because that happened and no one can erase that from time…even though they can because I built a time machine.

The point is, I’m selfish. Selfish to the point where I would betray everyone around me. Everyone that called me a friend. Everyone that called me a co-worker, shipmate, lab partner, drinking buddy (okay that last one is a lie because Swerve doesn’t allow briefcases in his bar which is the definition of singling someone out). I am the betrayer and all for… me.

So I could save someone for me. So I could make myself happy. Because me me me me and _me_.

I admit it. I’m not going to lie about it. I did so much lying that I’m pretty much over that; although to be fair I didn’t really ever lie outright. I just lied on the edges of truths. I never killed, I just made all the things that did the killing.

That’s pretty selfish too, when you get down to it.

The point is I’m not a genius because I’m smart. I’m a genius because I took what mediocre knowledge I had and turned it into genius for my own reward. My own benefit.

Being selfish means being weak and I am about as weak as they get. I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t get over it. So I used what I had and threw all my smarts into it and what did I do? I created a fracking time machine, that’s what I did and I never hesitated. Not once. At least not until I was about to kill an evil Warlord. Great time to hesitate, huh? Know what else? All the work, all that motivation, all that betrayal and I realize it wasn’t for him. It was for me.

He didn’t even know. All those math equations, all those millions of years planning and I couldn’t even equate a way to tell him.

That is what they’ll never understand. That is what they’ll never be able to grasp. Sort of like how I can’t really grasp the reasoning behind not letting me go to jail after everything? I’m not Shockwave, but even that much illogical logic is driving me a little bit crazy.

So what’s my point in all this? I made three already, but I guess I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. Do I regret it? No. Yes. Both.

I don’t because look what I did? It was awesome. I do because I didn’t actually accomplish anything and that’s the greatest failure a scientist can have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to use the Lost Light Fest on tumblr as an excuse to try and kick my ass back into writing because I have been unsuccessful with every other attempt thus far -_- 
> 
> Thanks for reading, as always =)


	4. Remember to Die, Don't Forget to Live

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter does have spoilers for issue 55 of More Than Meets the Eye! You have been warned.

**Tumbler - But Everyone Still Calls Me Chromedome**

Because during the war, heck even before the war began, your  _ name _ didn’t define you; what you  _ did _ defined you. I didn’t tumble in any acrobatic sense and my alternate mode wasn’t a vehicular tumbler. I never really understood my original name. Tumbler. What is that even? I guess since I was constructed cold that maybe someone was just writing random words down and assigning them as bots came off the assembly line, or someone wanted to get away with naming someone something _ really _ stupid. All the good names are taken anyway. Why else would someone who turns into a vehicle change their name to  _ Dent _ . Not that I really blame the guy; no one should ever have to be the second Prowl. No one needs that namesake.  

I might be a little biased on that topic, though.

After more recent events, I’m beginning to wonder if some higher being out there, should it exist, didn’t have some kind of sick sense of humor by giving whoever penned my name down an unknown metaphor for how I stumble through life. How I’ve tumbled from one thing to the next with no real end in sight. 

I’ve had what I thought would be ends. I’ve had goals and finish lines and the grand end picture of what I  _ knew _ would be the great abrupt period at the end of the sentence of my life story all figured out. I remember most of those absurd dreams… apparently others I don’t. 

That should scare me, I think, but it doesn’t. Not anymore. Don’t get me wrong, it did scare me- especially when Brainstorm told me. I didn’t remember the things he told me as I held my own fingers to my neck and there’s a weird numbing peace in not knowing what you’ve done or haven’t done. Then there’s this seed made of absolute panic that sits in the back of your mind and it slowly grows until it’s vines take over your thoughts and you find yourself suffocating in the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘what could have beens’ and the ‘what have I dones’. It was enough to drive me crazier than most of my patients had ever been.

I was about to do it- why would the idea of having done it before be anything other than true?

What a childish and horrible way to honor someone. How twisted had I become that I forced myself to forget things that should always be remembered. What kind of person can be made from forgetting the things that should make them stronger? A pathetic one. 

I can’t even say I  _ was _ pathetic because it wasn’t until just recently that I’ve learned I can be better than that. I still feel pathetic because it didn’t end there. It didn’t end in me taking the easy way out. Yes, in that moment, I pulled back and it was one of the hardest things I had ever done (to my knowledge because to me I’ve only loved Rewind in that way) and it was a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t the end. It was the start of a different path to destruction. A different way of running and being selfish.

I kept doing the only thing I knew how to do. Injecting. I did something different and it scared me so I decided that that was going to be the only thing different because it made me miserable. I may not have forgotten, but I was still trying to forget- even for just a moment. 

Even after the impossible happened. Even after Rewind came back. Even after I had a hand to hold again I still tried to pretend none of it had ever happened. I treated him like nothing was different; like he hadn’t gone through what I had. To him I was dead and to me he was never gone in the first place. I didn’t treat him like he’d been tortured by the DJD or that everyone he called his friends were killed in horrific ways as he was forced to watch. 

As far as I was concerned nothing was wrong even though everything was wrong, but sometimes if you pretend enough it becomes real. Even if that real is a delusion you’ve convinced yourself is the truth and you know everyone else knows it’s a lie, but to you it’s not and that is all that matters. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it did, it does, to me. 

So I kept doing it even when Rewind told me to stop, begged me to stop. Even after I told everyone I was going to stop. Even after Ratchet told me it was killing me. I kept doing it whenever Rodimus asked; not because he’s my captain or even a friend (he’s a heartless jerk for asking in the first place) but because nothing good had come out of me injecting in the past and maybe this time would be different. Maybe this time I would help someone or change the situation for the better. Maybe I could use a small success to tell me that not everything I had been doing in the past was bad and pathetic and weak. 

Because Rewind was still looking for Dominus. Because to him, even the second him, I wasn’t good enough. Because pulling out hadn’t changed anything and knowing that I could forget what needed to be changed was driving me a new kind of crazy.

I kept having nightmares, watching how those whose memories I’ve looked at died. Knowing things about people in the halls next to me that they didn’t even know. Knowing things so dark and horrible it would drive them mad. So I kept digging because if I was going to go mad from all this I might as well go  _ mad _ .  

Then two things happened: At the end of world, when I was convinced it was going to be over, Rewind chose me. After everything I’ve done to him and myself. After everything I did to others and after doing everything I shouldn’t have, he chose me. I don’t know why, I won’t pretend that I do know why, but he did and it’s all I need right now so I’ll leave it alone just as it is. Something I’ve never done before. 

Then the second thing happened. I killed one of the best bots I’ve ever known. I killed Skids with what I knew and with what he had forgotten because I made him remember. As his grip went limp in my hands so much went through my mind. I wondered how he was smart enough to take the easy way out and then I realized that wasn’t it at all. 

It’s easy to forget. It’s hard to remember. He was so much stronger than I was. He didn’t run or stop trying to remember. He knew what taking my hand would mean and he did it. He remembered so  _ others _ could live and I tried to forget so  _ I _ could live. 

The difference is so obvious.

Tragedy came and instead of rising above it or weathering the storm out or finding support from those around me I did the worst thing possible. 

I forgot about it. 

I spat on the memory of life and tribulation and I am no better than, in fact I am worse than, any person I’ve fought in this war for doing that. I  _ hate _ it and I’m not sure I will ever not hate it, but I can let that sit. I can let that sit because in the span of an hour I learned more about myself and those around me than all the other hours of this entire crazy starship ride put together. 

The way I see it, well the way Skids taught me to see it (because I was the last person he ever talked to), is like this: You’re weak most of your life and then something happens and you’re not. You keep walking and you don’t know why, but you do and then you stop, look back, realize how far you’ve come and then look forward and make your choice. Do you stop now or later?

He chose now because of what he remembered and now I choose later because of what I don’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm a little behind in the Lost Light Fest, but I went away to New York Comic Con so I think that's an acceptable excuse, yes? I'll be catching up these next couple days so this might update a lot... Thanks for reading as always - Siri


	5. Testament

**Skids**

I only have a moment to think about all this and all I can say is...

My life is weird. Weird as weird can get. If you look back to where I came from to how I somehow ended up here, now, in this… I don’t even know what to call it, things just go from odd to wonky to sideways to completely inside out. I know you’re looking back, so can you tell me where it all started to spiral out of control? 

I don’t mean that in a bad way, not entirely. When something is completely out of your control it’s scary. It’s really scary. Most people need to be in control, just to varying degrees. I know people like myself who go with what is thrown at them and we make it up along the way. Rodimus, Ratchet, Velocity… hell even Eyebrows, we’re all really good at this. Things happen and yeah, we freak out a little, but we still somehow manage to make it out the other end and usually with a really good story to tell over drinks. We’re random and spontaneous and that’s how we handle the chaos that rules the universe. 

Honestly, though I think I’m just trying to make up a really good excuse for chasing after a Sparkeater or stealing a fake matrix bomb with the Doc or giving you my hand. Just rolling with the punches, I guess. 

I’d rather be able to roll with the punches than be on the opposite end of the spectrum. Those who need to be in control of everything.  _ Literally everything _ at  _ all _ times. Like Prowl. Look where that got him, and damn, I still owe him a really good kick to the stomach, even though that barely shines a light to throwing him off a cliff. That was spectacular. Rewind recorded that you know. He keeps it on easy access for anyone who wants to watch it because what else in this universe could make us happier? 

A lot, actually, but not all of us get the ‘a lot’ part of life. I did, though. I definitely did. I’ve done some crazy stuff in my life; who else takes a sniper shot at Chief Tyrest with a nudge gun? No one because that was me. Or who else gets infected with personality parasites? Getaway did, but… that was for all the wrong reasons, right? 

Hey, promise me something? You’ll kick his ass, right? You’ll make sure everyone gets a really good punch in? Even if this doesn’t work, you’ll all still survive this and you’ll get back the Lost Light and you’ll throw him off a cliff or something and you’ll find the Knights. 

You’ll definitely find them. I know it. I don’t know how I know, but I do. I can feel it. 

Just make sure you kick Tarn’s ass first. For me. For Quark. For Brainstorm. Hell… do it for Megs. He’s not so bad a guy. 

I wish I could come with you all, but I’m tired. I am so  _ so _ tired. I’ve been floating with the currents my whole life and now I’ve been holding onto a rock trying to keep it from dragging me under and my strength is gone. Does that make me weak? Maybe it does, but there’s no regretting it. Not if it means you guys get to go dish out some well deserved ass kickings and I… I finally get to sleep. 

I’ll miss you all. Tell them, won’t you? Tell them I say… sorry, not sorry. 

_ From Skids _

_ I’ll tell them. I promise. Word for word. Good-bye. -Chromedome _

Nah, not good-bye. Just… until later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh goodness was he hard to write! So much I wanted to say, but it ended up way shorter than I thought, but thats okay. 
> 
> I will be writing a ton tomorrow (I hope) so maybe I'll be able to get caught up on this since I am epically behind and now going out of order... ah well. Thanks for reading, as always! I am so happy that you all seem to be liking this; the kind words have meant a lot to me. Until next chapter! (Hopefully sooner rather than later)- Siri


	6. Long Division

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This contains spoilers for More Than Meets the Eye issues 50-57. You have been warned.

**Perceptor**

_           E = 9.87 sin(2B) - 7.53cos(B) - 1.5 sin(B) _

_           Where E is in minutes and _

_           B= 360°(N - 81)?364 if sin and cos have arguments in degrees, _

_           or _

_           B = 2x(N - 81)364 if sin and cos have arguments in radians. _

_           Here, N is the so-called day number.  _

This is how the universe makes sense to me; through numbers and signs and tangents and code. Now, I can’t say that about this exact equation because I have not been able to wrap my head around it yet, but I invented quantum physics while teaching myself quantum physics so perhaps one day I will figure this out. 

Unlikely.

This is the equation for “time”. Not time as in the grand overarching expanse of the universe and it’s ever expanding nonexistent borders, but time as we’ve invented it; as sentient beings have tried to conceptualize it, perceive it, grasp it, and control it. In theory I understand it. I can certainly take the time to math it out. It’s a very easy equation and I’ve seen far more complex equations when it comes to dealing with time. I’ve seen the equations to bend time and warp it and travel through. I’ve seen the equations that break all known laws that we have in science and I’ve understood them all, but this… this something else entirely. 

There’s been a lot of time to think recently. With Rodimus gone (and most of the other trouble makers) we haven’t had any deviations from our course or taken any side trips. Not that we have a real ‘course’ to follow. We haven’t done much of anything except make a lot of jumps to absolutely nowhere in particular. The hours have been dragging on and on. 

Which is part of my conundrum. Sometimes, when you are not getting anything accomplished time crawls; the ticking of a clock taunting you that you still have hours left in the day to do  _ something _ , but you know you’ll just end up staring at the wall. Other times, when you are being just as inexcusably useless, time goes by so fast it seems like your clock is laughing at you. Like it stole those minutes on purpose just to see your dismay. 

So how can the same amount of time feel different? There is no difference in the seconds, minutes, hours, passing of the sun or moon or stars (or shift changes as per Magnus’ timely regulations on this ship which have somehow held even after his forced departure) and yet I have had a single day feel like an entire week and nothing more than a couple passing hours on different occasions. 

I once overheard Rung explain this phenomena in what is known as the Fast to Slow Perception Theory. As we speed up time slows down or conversely if we slow down time seems to speed up. He was talking about us in our circumstances; basically what we are doing during that time determines how we perceive it. All I could think about was how scientifically this was true, but also very wrong. If we are traveling upwards towards the speed of light time does, in fact, slow down. If we leave somewhere, travel for but a short distance at the speed of light and return: days, months, years, or even decades might have passed by for those we left behind. While for us it was only a drive around the block. So when I am sitting at my computer or working in my lab how does my perception of time change even when I haven’t moved? 

The same thing has happened when I have been moving. I am not a stranger to the complete stillness of a lab or the utter chaos of a battle field. I have sat reading a book for the same amount of time as I have ran around a Decepticon warship taking lives. In both cases I have felt time pass me by quicker than Blurr runs laps around a racetrack, but I have also, in both cases, wondered when it would be time to end things for the day because I felt eons older in just an hour or two. 

Drift told me a long time ago that time was an illusion. Something we’ve manufactured to try and settle our minds to the idea that one day we won’t have any time left. He’s also a little obscure to quote when it comes to science, but he wasn’t wrong. Not one bit. 

The only time I ever felt like I had a grasp on time was when I was laying on the floor of Turmoil’s ship dying. Each time the gears that were grinding within my cracked and splayed chest circled they went around a little slower. I could hear them and feel them ticking away like the hands on a clock and I understood, just for a fleeting moment what time meant and how we always think we have too much of it, but once too much passes we want more. 

Then in an instant I was alive and a million miles from Turmoil’s ship and months had passed and that  _ scared _ me. It was the first time I ever felt like I hadn’t been in control of anything around me and that is when I realized I don’t have any control over this at all. We  _ can’t _ control time. We had a time machine  _ on _ this ship and we still didn’t have control over it because apparently going back in time is what we were supposed to do so we thought we were playing God, but in actuality we were just being played like strings on a Harmonix Guitar. I’ve sat here thinking about this for so long that I feel like it be driving me a bit mad, but there’s no one here I can puzzle this out with. 

Granted if the people I would talk to about this were still on the ship I wouldn’t have time to talk to them because we’d probably be getting ourselves into some giant mess or another…

And maybe that’s the missing equation in all this? 

But too much time has gone by. I lost any fleeting hope of time I could have had to get them back. I bet those last hours felt like the fastest eternity to ever pass. I know this silence since they’ve left has been just that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, let's assume he wrote this post issue 57. He has no idea what happened to Rodimus and the others. At least to our knowledge he knows about as much as everyone else and that's that they're super dead. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'll see you tomorrow hopefully -Siri


	7. Standing Out

**First Aid**

Ratchet always had this theory, that us medics are built different from everyone else and no, I’m not talking about our hands. He thought we were built tougher even though we don’t really look it. We have to be able to take the punches, go through the trenches to the front lines, dodge the bullets, fall, and still be on our feet to help those who took the harder punches and he is right, for the most part. Whether you believe that forged medics are better than those of us constructed cold or not it doesn’t matter, because even if we aren’t made stronger, faster, or more durable we have to be all of these things and more. 

We have to be able to carry someone, anyone that needs help, away from danger whether they are smaller than us, the same height as us, or taller than us. Whether they can be lifted over our shoulders or barely picked up off the ground we will get them to safety. Sometimes we have to be innovative (it’s not like I could pick up Fort Max without a considerable amount of leverage), but we will puzzle it out because we have too. 

If we take a bullet and the bot next to us takes a bullet then we’ll pull theirs first as long as we are able. We’ll stomach the worst of it, things that would have even the most hardened of soldiers looking away. We will make the snap decisions without second guessing ourselves and we will make the hard decisions knowing that it will haunt us for years to come. We will stay up for days to save a life and we’ll sacrifice our own energon for any chance to keep a spark burning. We will sit by a bed for hours to be near a dying soul and then we’ll curse and scream and cry when they are gone.

Then we will stand up, take a moment of silence, and do it all over again. 

So Ratchet was right when he said medics are built different. He could mean literally, but he also means there’s something different about our core, about  _ us _ . Our mindsets and wills and what drives us and how we think and the way we look at the world. Each one of us is different, time and experiences contribute to that, but we all still have a similar base at the root of it all. Except maybe Pharma and thank Primus the rest of us didn’t turn out like that. We could have, I have no doubts about that. Not after what I’ve seen and done since I joined the Lost Light. 

You’d think I’d say after what I’ve seen and done in the war, but no. Between Delphi, Red Alert decapitating himself, Swerve accidentally decapitating Rung, Overlord’s rampage, Luna 1, hearing about the other Lost Light, Ofsted XVII, Ratchet leaving and actually promoting me, the debacle on the  _ Vis Vitalis _ , Swerve’s Agent 113 bullet, and  _ becoming a damned combiner  _ in the middle of the circus I used to call home (which I’m really not sure how I’m going to tell anyone about that once we’re back on the ship) I think I’m allowed to say enough has happened in recent history to change some things fairly quickly. I can, at least, see why Ratchet became so cynical these last few years (decades really). 

I saw a friend and mentor go absolutely mental and then later I  _ killed him _ with my own hands. I saw Ambulon die. My insistence to make up for these two blunders led Trailbreaker to his death. I watched the person I’ve been learning everything I need to be just as good as him leave; well I didn’t  _ watch _ him because he left without a word… and promoted me with a note.  _ A. Note _ . Rodimus thought I had forged it at first. I went back to my home planet, the one we’ve been fighting over for millions of years, the one that thousands of sparks died for, and immediately saw why Rodimus had gathered that rag tag bunch of bots and left as fast as he could. 

I was so isolated on Delphi that I didn’t really have a grasp on the way things can warp you out here. When the war was in full swing, sure, I saw some pretty horrible stuff, but now that it’s over? Everyone’s slowly going crazy in the silence and I’m not much of an exception.

I killed someone. On purpose. What  _ doctor _ does that? 

I still want to help others. I still want to heal. I still want to do what I’ve always done, but I feel like I’ve been tainted. Like my base has been corrupted and I’m no longer worthy of the title medic. Am I still strong enough? Because I’ve had a lot of weak moments recently. Am I still sharp enough? I’ve done a whole lot of second guessing. Am I motivated enough? 

I don’t know, honestly. 

I had better be because I don’t have a choice. Not right now. I still have a lot of time to put in. Ratchet did his, he deserves his break. I don’t. Not yet. Whether my foundation is cracking or not I have to weather this out, at least for now. I’ve taken the easy way out. I can’t do that again. I won’t. 

I hope. 

Something tells me I am going to need to be ready soon, but then again when you’re traveling on the Lost Light and Rodimus and Megatron are your captains, what can you expect? Misadventures, silly injuries to treat, lots of parties, a lot of ambient tension in the halls… anything but silence. Which is good. None of us need silence right now. 

…

We’ve been trying to hail the Lost Light and all we’ve heard over the radio is silence. I tried phoning Velocity and nothing. I guess my hunches were right. Time to be more, even when I’m not sure I can. 

I don’t have a choice, which is good because I think I’d choose wrong right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not too happy with this one, but at least I wrote! 
> 
> I also realized while I was researching something for this that First Aid hasn't actually returned to the Lost Light since he escorted Mirage back to Cybertron and became a combiner (Spoiler alert, sorry). At least he hasn't to our knowledge since he hasn't appeared in any MTMTE issues since he left in #43. So the end was a little thing I tacked on - we can assume he wrote this on his way back to the LL and now I really want to write something about what he'll find on the strangely quiet ship... could do a sequel, but I'll catch up on the missing pieces I haven't written first! 
> 
> Thanks for reading, as always. -Siri


	8. For Tomorrow

**Ambulon**

I’ve saved lives. I may not look like much, but I am, at least, reliable. I have seen a lot over the years, more than I think people give me credit for. I used to have no function, well, almost no function, but there’s no usefulness when you can’t shine on your own. I don’t really stand out in a room, minus a bad paint job, but I can’t seem to find myself to care a whole lot about that. Not when there is so much more to focus on in life, as fleeting as it is and I am not just saying that because I’m a medic. Life is very fleeting, just at a different rate for us. 

We actually have _ more _ time than most in the universe and it’s a gift we don’t know how to use correctly. We’ve been so busy fighting that now that it’s over we don’t know what to do with our time. There’s no huge battles to win with guns; there are battles to win, but they are all personal now. There are no planets to conquer or win back even though there are plenty of planets we can help. There are no weapon heavy space stations to build, no new tactics to come up with or bio weapons to create a vaccine for. 

I say that, but all these things are still necessary. Everyone is so unsure of how to not be at war that they are convinced it hasn’t actually ended. Look at what happened on Delphi? The DJD wouldn’t have still been there if they’d followed to dropping of arms. They might be the extreme case, though. Maybe. We hear inklings about what is happened on Cybertron and it sounds like things are tenuous at best. 

We need to learn to focus on the here and now and what we can do in the present. When there’s fighting you are always so focused on the future that you forget where and when you are and when you do realize that it’s hard to stay focused on it. That’s what I’ve always tried to keep my sights on because when everyone is so caught up in the what ifs and the maybes and the missions sometimes the rest of us get left in the dust. 

Because when you are focused on the now you can realize where you’ve come from and realize that there is way more time ahead of you than you think.


	9. A Lesson in History

**Rewind**

I think everyone forgets how old I am. There’s something about being tiny that makes everyone assume you’re younger, which is weird because on our world height never really dictated age in the first place. I’ve been here for a long time. Since before war and I’m not alone in this matter. A lot of people here have been around for a long time- we just seem to forget that there was a time before the war. Myself, Rung, Ratchet, Rodimus and so many others. I have the proof for most of us. Rodimus not so much because no one seemed to know him before Nyon, but I know he was there. There’s something in the way he thinks.

There’s something different about those of us that were around during the Golden Age and, let’s make one thing very clear, I’m not talking about the Golden Age after the functionalists had their nasty claws all over the government which was still before the Decepticon movement began. I am talking about the Golden Age when we were blissfully ignorant of the seeds of malevolence that were planted but barely sprouting in the backgrounds. 

Yes, things still weren’t actually peaceful, but most of us weren’t aware of that just yet and there’s something in  _ that _ that makes us different. We were a little happier than most that the war ended. I mean, I think a lot of people were happy, but there were an air of confusion and a whole lot of ‘what nows?’ floating around. Us on the other hand? We knew what to do, almost immediately. We had the luxury of peace to know what was important to us and what answers we needed from questions that have been plaguing us for far too long. So when the tides turned from war to peace, just as they had from peace to war, we seemed to adapt just a bit better.

I don’t blame the others, though. After you spend so much of your life consumed by a single thing, when the rug gets ripped out from under your feet there’s not much to do other than look around confused and a bit hurt. I’ve seen what has consumed my friends lives; I’ve seen what has consumed my enemies lives and we are not so different. We aren’t very different at all. A lot of people just wish we were still different and not the same now that the fighting is over. 

The only thing that separates any of us is what happened over these millions of years of chaos and  _ millions _ of years is a long time for a whole lot to happen in. Not a single one of us is the same or can be the same because not every single one of us saw and heard and felt the same things even when we were standing next to each other. A sunrise for me is very different than the same sunrise for the person standing right next to me; it means something different for each of us. It could be a blessing, it could be a curse, it could be mysterious or haunting or beautiful or terrifying. 

It doesn’t have to be a million years of difference and experience either. A year, a month, a week, a day, an hour… a few minutes is enough to change anyone. It could be a little or it could be a lot. They could take what they learned and hide it and cherish it or it can turn them around and burn the world under their feet. 

* * *

 

Now that I know what happened I can see that it wasn’t just  _ me _ that changed upon our Lost Light, but it was every single soul on that ship. Rodimus, Drift, Ratchet, Domey… all of us are...were… so different from the group that took me in and it was only a mere year that had passed. Everyone here? They’re a little more weary, a little bit sadder, and a lot more determined. They did a hell of a lot more than we did and that changed them and we had different experiences and it made us more cautious, more thoughtful, but less successful. 

And that’s the long and short of it, isn’t it? A divide happened and I don’t remember writing this, so that can only mean that  _ he _ and  _ I _ became two  _ very _ different people from the moment a bang and a fire set us off course. He was onto something, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! I got two things written today! 
> 
> Also, Rewind kills me a little inside.


	10. Whispers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter does elude to Red Alert's suicide attempt and the aftermath of that choice. If this does not sit well with you, please move to the next chapter. You do what makes you feel safe. 
> 
> I take this very seriously- as a combat vet that suffers some fairly traumatic attacks it's not anything to take lightly, but I also am a firm believer in discussion and putting things that are real out there. This is real and this is how I will present it to you.

**Red Alert**

Am I paranoid? Yes. Am I a bit over dramatic? Sure. Am I always wrong? No, not always and that is part of the reason that this just kept getting worse over time. I was wrong sometimes and immediately after I’d start second guessing my theories, but then, that  _ one time _ I’d be right. I would be right and then I’d second guess my second guesses and it would spiral out of my control from there. 

There should be some sort of relief knowing that I wasn’t wrong this entire time. That there was something to worry about, that my delusions weren’t actually delusions (okay only  _ some _ of them weren’t), and that I am way more perceptive than pretty much everyone in the universe ever gave me credit for. Honestly, though? I’m a bit disturbed that I was right. That I was so worried about these weird little things here and there that everyone started calling me crazy. That whatever I was going on about, was so far fetched it could  _ never _ happen. Then it happened. 

The insane happened. We created a world that A. made bots like me unhinged from everything existence really is and B. actually gave us a reason to be that paranoid. What have we actually been doing these past six million years? You know, aside from planting things inside brains that can control people. We created a place of such chaos that we needed to start looking over our shoulders, listening and reading between the lines, finding the clues, and talking in codes. It’s not really much of a wonder why I derailed so spectacularly. 

A semi peace has sort of settled now that I know (some of) the danger has actually passed this time. I also learned something about myself that I didn’t know. A couple things, actually. The first being that I can shoot Prowl and not get shot back for doing it because apparently there’s a line from Helix to Vos and back of bots waiting to take a stab at him. Second that there’s fight left in me that I thought I had lost a long time ago. 

When everyone calls you crazy for as long as you can remember then you start to believe them after a time; even if you can’t change the reasons they think you’re one circuit short of a sensible person. It got to a point where I knew what they were going to say to me so I never bothered to tell them anything. They would notice eventually, usually because of my paranoid tells and then I’d have to divulge everything anyway. They’d call me crazy, I’d still take all my usual precautions, they’d roll their optics at me, and in the end I’d either be right or wrong, but for whatever reason it didn’t matter because I was onto the next plot, the next spy, the next issue. 

What was the point of trying to think differently when I knew that everyone already had their ingrained views of me and no matter what I said I would be discredited for it? Why should I try to change if I was right some of the time. I was trying to prove something to myself more than anyone else out there, because I knew I wasn’t in the right state of mind and there’s always some sort of subconscious code in you that wants to balance things out. So if I kept doing things the way I felt were right and at the end if I could come out in one piece I’d be able to at least have that one, minute piece of sanity to keep me grounded. 

I didn’t prove myself right and in the end? I did  _ not _ end up in one piece. I was in a million pieces because even if your body is whole, when your mind is shattered you are not, in any way shape or form, okay. 

The way I see it now, though, is that I didn’t prove anything to myself...in time. In the time I needed some sort of evidence to keep from going over the edge. From… well taking my own head off. Max once asked me if I was upset that I did that. I am. I will never not be upset at my choice, but I also know, now, that it had its purpose. I know it sounds weird, horrible, and everything that’s  _ wrong _ and it is, don’t get me wrong; no one should ever be driven to that. Ever. 

But what would I have done otherwise? What if I went exploring on my own. What if I found out that Overlord was down there. What if I had thrown the ship into that chaos earlier than it had actually happened. Yes, lives would have been saved, but that trip? The Lost Light’s expedition? No, it would have ended. 

Rodimus would have gotten thrown off the ship with Drift and Chromedome. Rewind never would have forgiven Chromedome. Never, and even though the little guy lost his spark in the way it did end up playing out, Chromedome wouldn’t have survived that separation. Ultra Magnus never would have almost died, and they never would have had to follow him.

They would never find Luna 1. They would never find Tyrest and stopped his killswitch. The Circle of Light still would be captive to that crazed lunatic. Pharma would still be plotting his revenge for Ratchet. Minimus would still be hiding. Getaway would still be getting tortured. Fort Max never would have become the new Duly Appointed (you know the rest of the title). I wouldn’t have left the Lost Light. I’d still be there. Even more paranoid than before. Even more scared and crazy. Even more stuck in my own mind. I can’t imagine. I don’t want to imagine.

I was lucky, though. I was saved. It is so incredibly rare that anyone gets the luxury of a second chance and I will not make that choice again because yeah, all the above  _ didn’t _ happen, but a lot of other things didn’t happen either. This is the kind of thinking that got me stuck in a ball of self imposed chaos for eight million years and it needs to stop. The bottom line is I was right, but I was also wrong and I should have looked around me at all the people willing to help me. They would have listened if I had let them.

I thought they were just being nice, but they weren’t. They were genuine and I think the worst thing I did, out of all the pretty terrible things I did, was deny their helping hands. When you get so tied up in expecting the walls to stab you in the back that you think anything is fair in the game of betrayal. That’s not fair to think- not at all. You’ll either end up like me… or like Prowl. Neither of us have been sparkling role models, that’s for sure.

At least now we’re both trying to think differently. We are both trying to reset, maybe a little behind everyone else, but I know now that that is okay. We still have our quirks, and always will, but we can change. We will change. 

Its terrifying, but it’s also an uncertainty that has a lot of certainty in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this chapter got away from me. I wasn't expecting it to take the turns that it did, but I'm glad that it did. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with this everyone! The kudos and comments and your messages on Tumblr too are all really awesome and I'm glad people are enjoying this. I know I say that a lot, but seriously. Thank you. =)


	11. Twitchy

**Whirl**

I’ve come to one conclusion; that everyone here is crazy. I know everyone calls me crazy, and they aren’t wrong. I have been missing a whole lot of screws for a very,  _ very _ long time; the only difference between me and them is that I’ve embraced who I’ve become. It wasn’t my choice, but hell at least now I’m fun in my own eyes...eye. See what I did there? Of course you did. Anyway, the point is anyone who chooses to let me be in their general vicinity can’t possible have all their wires crossed correctly, but I also wouldn’t want to be in the company of anyone who was that boring. 

Which is fine, I know the only reason I was even allowed to leave the ship in the first place on one of our expeditions was because they needed someone willing to pull the trigger when no one else would. I’m the only one here who’s trigger finger (claw) still gets twitchy when it hasn’t shot something in more than a day. Rodimus isn’t wrong in asking me; I’m good at what I do. I was a Wrecker for a reason (let’s just put aside the fact that everyone in the Wreckers was at the top of the ‘Most Messed Up Bots’ list) and the government turned me into what I am  _ for a reason _ . I don’t think it turned out they way wanted it too, though. Ha. Good. 

There’s a lot of talk about Empurata. How is was “actually supposed to turn out” because it looks like it failed on a few of the more notable cases...like me or Shockwave, but we won’t talk about that guy because in the grand scheme of things he was friggin  _ boring _ . So if they were supposed to wipe away all my emotions then why take my hands? I wouldn’t  _ care _ . I wouldn’t care that I don’t have a face. I wouldn’t care about anything. But they left me with something, a tiny seed of anger and then they took my hands and with the knowledge of why that  _ sucked _ (still sucks) that seed grew and now it’s me. Everything that is me. I’m not much more than a really angry, trigger happy, filterless helicopter who used to be a watchmaker who lost his hands and who can’t ever do that again and who just really wants to watch the universe burn the way they do on the inside. 

The problem I don’t think anyone saw coming was that the only way this curse can be overridden is by relearning whatever you lost. I guess that’s what happened to Shockwave? I don’t know. I’m not sure how he would have done it. I never really  _ wanted _ to lose this after it happened. Why would I? If I cared again then I wouldn’t be able to dish the proper payback to those that deserve it. 

I think they’re all dead by now anyway. Don’t care! Still going to kick their asses. Even if it’s their corpses. I’m going to kick them. Into a sun. 

Maybe that’s the programming. Don’t care. I work just fine this way. I’ve done more than just kill a lot of stuff this way. I’ve done some good, I think. Was the whole thing with Cyclonus and Tailgate good? That was weird, but I guess since Cyclonus said thank you (and that made me feel really super gross on the inside) it was good. Last thing I’ll do for him. I swear. Because I still hate him for all the (right) reasons. I like Tailgate though. He’s a cool guy. Just a little weird. 

We all are. 

And by we all I mean the like fifteen of us stuck here waiting for our execution. I’m excited. I don’t think we’re gunna die. At least I won’t. We’ve done a lot of crazy shit since we left Cybertron and we all did a lot of crazier shit during the war and we’re all still alive so how is this much different? We get to kick the super baddies of the universe into the ground and then we get to go look for Getaway and kick his ass even harder. 

See? I might be messed up, but at least my motivation is in the right place. Sure, anger is my only companion, but it’s not misplaced. I know how to focus it. I know how to use it and that makes me more dangerous than anyone else here. 

Except Megatron. He’s the master at that. I’d applaud him if I could, even though he’s gone sort of weak recently. All that talk about not killing anything ever again. How does that even work? I can’t… even… nope. Can’t comprehend it. 

How do you take the only coding that makes sense to you and ignore it? How do you take everything you’ve come to except as so very  _ you _ in the last million years and say ‘nah, I’ll just change’? Is that even a real thing? 

Probably not. You can’t fight what this war has turned you into. If you try you’ll just end up popping and that could get messy. So I don’t fight it or try to change it. I use it. I don’t care if that doesn’t make sense. A lot of what I say doesn’t make sense to anyone but me and even then sometimes it doesn’t even make sense to me. Either way six million years of war isn’t going to just go away so why bother pretending you don’t need to be ready for a fight? 

Boring!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Whirl. Does anyone else love Whirl like I do? He's just fun and complex as hell and it's awesome.


	12. An Adventure

**Pipes**

Brilliant. Of all the words I use to describe most things, I use brilliant. It’s a good word, I think. Maybe a bit naive, but I really don’t have much to compare the universe with. This adventure is the first time I’ve done anything like this! Is this an adventure? Rodimus says it kind of is and he’s been all over so I’m assuming we’re all part of a story here. 

Adventures are supposed to be fast, crazy, scary, exciting, and full of trials and accomplishments. This has definitely been all of that. Usually people are searching for something on adventures and we are! We’re looking for the Knights of Cybertron which is pretty cool. When you read stories about adventures someone is always looking for something that isn’t supposed to exist and they learn a lot and see a lot along the way and then they find it and everything changes.

Everything seems like it changes once they find it. In truth it’s always the adventure itself that changes the people and that’s definitely happening here too. We’re all a little different than when we left which is good because what’s the point of going somewhere to finds and learn new things and then not change? 

What’s even better is that a lot of us aren’t just out here looking for the Knights. I don’t know what everyone is looking for, like Ratchet or Swerve, but I know what everyone came here for a reason. Even if it was something as simple as finally seeing what life outside a space station was like. I wonder what Tailgate thinks of all this. He didn’t have much of a choice in coming aboard, but I don’t think he minds. I also don’t think he’d have liked they way Cybertron is now anyway. 

He’s told me a lot about how it used to be and it sounds like it used to be a wonderful place. I wonder if people from other places used to visit us the way we are visiting them? I’ll have to ask someone. For someone like me, who was never in a time outside of the war, it’s a lot of fun finally learning about what things are really like out here. It’s not always nice- I don’t like plagues and I feel like I’ve ended up in the medical bay more times than when people were  _ supposed _ to be shooting at me, but I don’t think it’s possible to avoid that kind of stuff. 

Maybe I’m wrong? I don’t know. I’ve never been anywhere that someone isn’t trying to kill someone else. I guess that’s just a thing in the universe. I don’t understand it and I know I won’t be able to comprehend everything out there, but it just doesn’t make sense to me. 

When you set foot on a not metal made planet for the first time and feel the air and smell the ground and feel the rain (or snow) and see green forest and blue oceans it’s pretty awesome. How beings can hate so much when there is so much...brilliance around them just doesn’t seem logical. Maybe I’ll figure it out the more we’re out here. Hopefully I’ll find what I’m looking for too. 

It’s not much, really. It’s a small thing in the grand scheme of our adventure and the universe out there, but it’s important to me. I am going to learn a lot and that is exciting, but I want to learn about more than other planets and species. I want to learn about my shipmates and about our history and about myself. The universe is  _ endless _ so where can I fit into all of it now? Who can I fit into it with? War is lonely and now that it’s over things are still lonely, but I don’t believe that will always be the case. Look at Chromedome and Rewind! 

Yeah, there’s definitely a lot more out there. There is definitely someone out there for me. I’m excited so find it all! I’m excited to see it all. I’m excited to go home and tell all my friends about it. They won't believe it and I'll finally get to sit there with a grin knowing that I was part of something brilliant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a whole lot is known about Pipes, but I always thought he was like a kid seeing the a red wood tree for the first time or someone seeing the ocean for the first time. Everything is new and exciting and he's sort of adorable.


	13. Fade Out

**Ratchet**

At first, I thought I would never be anywhere other than in medical school studying for tests I could never pass. Then I passed them and I thought I could never be anywhere other than doing my job in an operating room and working to become the CMO. Then I became the CMO and the world got a little uglier and I thought I’d never be able to do anything other than hide my clinic in the Dead End. Then war happened and I never thought I’d be anywhere but by Optimus’ side or on a battlefield or in a medical bay treating all horrors that came off the battlefields. 

Yet, here I am: Not in school, or in a government operating room treating false Primes, or even in my clinic since the Dead End itself doesn’t exist after the whole of Cybertron became a dead end. I am not anywhere near Optimus, or a battlefield. I’m not even in a medical bay anymore. 

I never condoned the war, but I made a vow as a medic, as a doctor, as a protector; to save lives no matter what. So war happened and I did what I had to because that was what I swore to do. Because that is what mattered to me and what I cared about. I saw the same fire in Orion’s eyes when he wanted to change the world, who was I to stop him? When you’re a doctor you can’t change what is going on outside your operating room because you have to be focused. You have to do what you set out to and if you try to do anything else you’ll end up failing.

I did end up failing over the years. I failed  _ a lot _ , but I also succeeded a lot. I saved lives and I made a difference and I can at least hope somewhere out there someone decided to do the right thing because I said something that changed their mind. 

I was judged a lot for the decisions I made. I saved lives.  _ Lives _ . Not Autobots or Decepticons. I save our enemies as I would our allies and I was spat at and hated for it. I was told not to. I was forced not to. I did a lot of things over the years that I didn’t want to do. I had to kill, I had to save myself over someone else, I had to let some die, I had to chose who to save over others. Some say I can justify what I did; it was for the betterment of the Autobots. It was war time. It was a hard decision, but you had to do it. Did I?

No. There is no justification. There never is when it comes to lives. 

I got disillusioned and disconnected from what it really means to do this job. It got very difficult not too. I vowed,  _ vowed _ to save every spark I could. A vow is a strong thing. It binds you to a cause or a person or an idea in ways that are hard to explain. It is like a little flame that is lit inside you and if you go against everything that fuels the fire it begins to flicker and you begin to doubt everything that drives you.

I’ve saved soldiers and then watched them sit for hours staring at empty walls because they can’t escape whatever horrors put them in my hands in the first place. I’ve brought sparks back from the edge of fadeout only to have it snuffed out again on purpose by the bearer because they didn’t want to be saved. I’ve put bots back together piece by mangled piece and wire by frayed wire only to see them however many months or years later on the other end of the battlefield aiming their guns at me and my allies. I’ve been asked “why?” so many times I don’t even know what the question actually means anymore.

Why did I save you? Why did you end up here? Why is there war? Why do we exist? Why do I have to keep fighting for you even when you don’t want to anymore? Why am I holding your hand and telling you that you’ve got to pull through? Why do I tell you it will be okay? 

I don’t know. Just… because. 

Because if I hadn’t or if I don’t then literally everything will have been for nothing and I am already trying so hard not to believe that is already the case. What was all that for? These past five plus million years of war boiled down to absolutely nothing and  _ so many _ lost their lives for literally the most anti-climactic disarmament in the entire history of the universe. 

I thought I’d be happy when it ended. I thought I’d finally be able to sit back and do what I loved to do and not have to worry about choosing to save one life over another because someone is more important to a war effort at the moment. Not have to worry about saving a life of an ‘enemy’, but the truth is I just feel hollow about it all. Cybertron is a sad and sorry place and I am found myself so  _ angry _ at everyone. 

Bumblebee tried so hard. He was given the shortest end of the shortest stick that could possibly exist when he got elected to lead after Optimus took the biggest cop out I have ever witnessed in all my long demented years, but he wasn’t up to it. Prowl dove off the deep end in a fashion I didn’t even know was possible. Optimus died and then came back and dropped the baton he had held for six million years, brushed his hands together and abandoned us. Just  _ took off _ and decided it wasn’t his problem anymore. Starscream won an election? 

Millions of lives were lost so Starscream could be president? 

Nope. I didn’t save those sparks so they could make such a monumentally idiotic mistake like that. I didn’t save Optimus so he could just… run away like that. I didn’t root for Bee and fix up a nearly dead Megatron for him just to have him get shot, almost saved by the ex-Decepticon leader, and then left behind to rot by Optimus. 

I stood there from the beginning. I fought with them in every major battle. I was never let in on any major secrets and my opinion rarely mattered when ideas were needed for war. I was left behind, a lot, told to look after things and never thanked for it. I took so many hits and I fell so many times and I never patched myself up before I tended to their wounds and my candle ran out of light to share so suddenly I didn’t think it was possible to light a match to it again. I know as a doctor we don’t do the things we do for thanks for gratitude or for pride. We do it for care, but after a million years of thankless successes and condemned failures I finally burned out.

Everyone on Cybertron was mad that I decided to join Rodimus, but the truth was I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t keep doing things for nothing and if I had stayed behind that is exactly what I would have been doing. I have to spark the flame inside myself again because it was snuffed out a long  _ long _ time ago. I need to find purpose and that sounds disgustingly like something Drift would say, but I had a purpose before the war and then that purpose just turned into a tool and now I’m not sure what I am. I’m not sure what to do. 

I did some good on the Lost Light. I saved a few lives, I fought a few fights I could get behind and I think I inspired a few minds, but at times it rubbed the useless nothingness that became of this war back in my face and I was right back to where I started at. Pharma being absolutely demented, Overlord nearly killing half the ship, Tyrest and his kill switch, the DJD killing the other Lost Light crew… losing more bots for no reason other than aftermath. I set off during the Golden Age to make a difference for  _ good _ and I’ve have done so much of the opposite that I had to leave to find what is still good out there. 

I know at least once, at least one time, I was able to change someone’s mind with words that I didn’t really think mattered at the time and now he taught me what it is to fight for what I think is right. I’ve been reminded what it is to burn from the inside. I’m going to find my fuel again. This won’t have been for nothing. 

This is me finally getting my own spark back online.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was so hard to write. Ratchet is my favorite Autobot, maybe even my favorite character. He's so much more complex than I thought and I hope I did him some justice. Thanks again for reading guys! 
> 
> I can't believe I got three chapters done today o.O


	14. TMI

**Swerve**

You learn a lot about people when you serve them drinks. You learn a little too much about them, actually. It’s not so horrible, at least they’re talking to me, and I guess I sort of get what I deserve because I really do have a trouble shutting up once I get started and now I am the one that’s gotta listen. This is that thing Drift called karma, right? Either way we’ve been on this journey for a well established time at this point and I’ve learned more about my crew mates than I ever thought I was going to and at times more than I ever wanted to.

Like, did you know Whirl made a clock (a bunch actually) and is too embarrassed to show anyone because it might make them think he’s less badass? Cyclonus actually doesn’t hate us and Rodimus has less self esteem than I do and that’s really impressive. Although, I probably shouldn’t be writing this down where someone might be able to find it one day. Oh well, by then who knows where we’ll be and who knows where our secrets will be. They might not be secrets anymore. Probably will be since I am pretty sure we’re going to die, but maybe not.

For as much as I run my mouth I think I’m actually really good at keeping secrets. For awhile it was easy because I wasn’t actually around, but… we won’t talk about that, will we? It’s sort of embarrassing. It made sense to me at the time, but after Skids chewed me out for being even more of an idiot than he originally thought I saw how selfish it was. But hey! If I  _ hadn’t _ become a self deprivating hermit in my room they never would have found the DJD message. I might have died too… but DJD message! 

I wish it was a cooler message. Something that could have helped us get out of this mess, but no one saw this coming. Which pisses me off. I should have seen this coming. I should have seen  _ something _ . I did, now that I think about it… I just didn’t think anything of it. Getaway sat down with pretty much everyone on the ship at one point or another. He was always there, always talking, always just being  _ him  _ and I just assumed since he’s sort of a popular guy that was just normal. 

What if I had chosen to listen just a little harder one day? 

I guess he would have shot me with that gun of his. Which from what I understand  _ sucks _ . Whirl says he remembers having a headache one day for no reason that was really  _ really _ bad. Skids too. I don’t which makes me think Getaway didn’t even  _ ask _ me if I wanted in on his rebellion. 

WHICH I WOULD HAVE SAID NO TOO. 

Don’t get me wrong, he’s an ass and can get fragged seven different ways to hell and back, but come on! I wasn’t even worth asking? Maybe I’m just predictable. I like to think I’m established. Since I talk so much I do tend to make it very clear where I stand on things and how things make me feel. Mostly that they scare me and that I’m just a really big coward, but I’m honest. Most of the time. I don’t really lie directly. I just sort of fail to mention things from time to time. Sometimes not even on purpose. 

I wonder what that jerk is doing with my bar. I should never have let Atomizer bar tend. They’re probably ruining it or twisting it into some demented space for their own selfish plans. I never thought that room would actually be a thing. I honestly didn’t even think I was going to be allowed to keep it open, but when Magnus didn’t exactly say no I decided to just swing with it and suddenly it was more than just a random corner of the ship to hide out in. It was the place people went  _ on purpose _ to unwind, hang out, rant to someone, be with someone they cared about, laugh about the past, and plan for the future. It was actually sort of...important. 

I’m really proud of that. I’ve never accomplished much in my life and I somehow managed to create a place admits chaos where there was relative peace and quiet and fun and it was safe. Except that time Brainstorm opened his briefcase, but we won’t mention that and he sort of got what he deserved for it. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. 

I really wish I was there right now. I wish all of us were there right now. Not here. Really anywhere but here would be nice, but there would be perfect. 

We could hold another dancing contest and this time I’ll tell Rodimus that he’s really not anywhere as good as Nautica is and I’ll make Blaster play.. actually no Blaster apparently didn’t want us around so  _ I _ will play that stupid song Tailgate wants to play just to drag Cyclonus away from the wall. I will find a song to get Nightbeat and Rung off their afts, because there has to be some tune out there in the universe they like. I’ll get Skids to tell us about more of his adventures when he was with Trailbreaker and the other outliers. We’ll stay up all night and watch more documentaries that Rewind made and play games at the big table in the middle. Rung can bring his ship model collection and we can help him rebuild it after he blew them up with that whole Froid attacking the ship thing. Hell I’ll even let Megatron read some of his writing and even  _ clap _ after. 

We would have fun. 

We would be safe. 

We would be alive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Swerve is a really interesting character and I wasn't to sure where to go with him. I just really like his bar and what it became. How integral it became.


	15. The Difference

**Tailgate**

I don’t really have a lot of life to compare everything that’s happened this last year too, but I think I’ve done a lot. I’ve definitely seen a lot and been to a lot of places and felt a lot of things and I learned even more than everything else combined. 

I think I’m really lucky and I know I’ve chosen the right team. 

And I’m not talking about Autobot or Decepticon because yeah, that was important when we first took off and when I first woke up after  _ six millions years _ (and I think I handled that quite well), but after the first few months went by and then next ones started rolling past us all that stuff before, all of that  _ war stuff _ , didn’t really seem like it was super important anymore. 

It still was sometimes. I mean we’re still dealing with it. Ratchet wouldn’t have had to go to Delphi if it wasn’t for the war, and Fort Max wouldn’t have gone on his rampage, and Tyrest wouldn’t have gone mad and made a kill switch, and Cyclonus wouldn’t suffer like he does.

But choosing a side wasn’t something we wanted to do anymore. I mean, Megatron joined the crew. The biggest, baddest Decepticon of them and honestly, he’s kind of a nice guy. I don’t even count him almost crushing my face as anything  _ bad _ . He wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been because of the war. I know that, but a lot of people think I’m just naive because of what happened with me getting stuck underground for the entirety of everything important that happened in ‘recent’ history. Cyclonus says that gave me a unique view on everything. 

Some bots on the ship couldn’t see past their ‘teams’, though. That’s what Getaway’s problem is. He couldn’t see past the fact that we don’t need to chose sides anymore and I don’t think that’s entirely his fault either! I mean, he worked for Prowl and from what I understand working for him was like the epitome of learning how to divide the good from the bad with nothing in between. Everyone had a different experience these past six million years and everyone had a different experience this past year and it’s unfortunate that that divided us just like the war did, but I’m glad I ended up where I am

Even if we’re on the smaller team the one that looks like it’s going to lose. We have something the rest of them out there don’t. 

We have Cyclonus, Swerve, Rodimus, Whirl, Nautica, Velocity, Rewind, Chromedome, Brainstorm, Nightbeat, Rung, Magnus, Ten, Ratchet, Drift, Megatron, Ravage, and me. We have us and we had Skids… and that’s what makes us different. Us. 

I don’t know what it is about us, but there’s something. We always look like we’re going to lose and we never do. We haven’t yet, at least. How can we?

Cyclonus is a great warrior and he’s survived pretty much everything; even death! Rodimus is actually a really good leader, sure he makes mistakes, but we all do so I can’t really blame him for every bad thing that happens like some people do. He tries really hard. Swerve could probably out talk Tarn and Nautica can improvise almost as good as Skids could and he got us this far. We have two of the best doctors in the universe with us and between Brainstorm and Chromedome they’ll figure a way for us to get out of here. Nightbeat won’t let this go without answering at least 99% of the questions we need answered and Rung isn’t going to let us give up. Drift is back too and he’s probably the bravest of all of us. Megatron and Ravage are going to keep fighting for us because that’s all they’ve done for us so far- I know the big guy will turn around and help us. He’s good now; not a coward. Magnus isn’t slacking and Ten already saved us from the sunset. 

Also? We have a Whirl. 

Cyclonus says I see the best in everyone and he’s probably right, but I bet that’s the reason I know we’re going to win. I don’t really see the  _ best _ I just see what makes us different from the rest. Everyone else back on the Lost Light, they’re all pretty similar; we’re not. That’s why they did this. They were scared of the changes we embraced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tailgate is so adorable omg. 
> 
> Also do you know how long I've wanted to pull the 'we have a Whirl' line? Ever since that friggin movie came out. That's a long time.


	16. For a Good Person

**Trailbreaker**

Damn it! 

What do you say about someone who has done almost everything there is to do? Who has stories to tell that everyone finds hard to believe because they are just that outrageous? Who has been on every side and has seen every angle of our damned history? Someone who’s done everything from get hunted down by the government to being considered one of the irreplaceable elite? Someone who has been spat at for being different, made fun of for being odd, used for his power, abused for his skills, and yet still wanted to just help everyone he possibly could? 

Someone who, once he put his mind to it, did whatever he thought was the right thing to do no matter how hard anyone else judged him for it. 

You can’t. There aren’t words or sentences or poems or songs or anything that can do him justice because we… we failed him. We failed him by not listening to his stories because we’d heard them before. By laughing at his antics when they were a cry for help. By not remembering he was one of us and has been since the beginning. 

He went through the same shit we did and sometimes even worse and time and time again when I look back, he was the one making everyone smile at his own expense. Time and time again he was the one that, at that last second, managed to save everyone by risking his own neck. He would show up, out of nowhere and suddenly there he was, hands out.

And he suffered for it. 

I can’t seemt to get past this rage about it. I’m angry, so angry at myself and everyone else here. What did we do for him? What didn’t we do? One of these has a longer answer than the other and that’s just  _ wrong _ . So incredibly wrong. Could things have been different? Yes. Can they now?

No. No they can’t and that’s… that is the worst part.

So here is what each and everyone of us needs to do from here on out and there will be no excuses. We stop ignoring each other. We start listening. We start helping. Just like he did. For no other reason than just because we can. That’s what he did and he was a million times better than anyone of us for it.

  * Rodimus, Captain of the Lost Light



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can we talk about how mad I was when Trailbreaker died? Because I was mad... might still be. Argh, I love that damaged bastard so much.


	17. Base Instinct

**Fortress Maximus**

Things have been more than a whirlwind since Delphi. They’ve been weird and confusing and ever changing and that is both a good and a bad thing. I like being busy. Being busy means not having a lot of time to sit still which means there’s very little time to think. Which is good. The last time I had silence and stillness and began to ponder the past I did things I wish I could take back.

I remember it all. Every last moment of it. I know I lied to Rung about that and he knew I was lying, but I still kept lying. I’m not exactly a nice guy. I might not be constructed cold but I still came online during the war and because my spark is green and not blue I was taught how to do one thing really  _ really _ well.

Kill things with purple badges. 

And I was good at it. I used to brag about walking away from Simanzi smiling (which okay I did actually do that and I admit that’s messed up) but when fighting is all there is in your life and that’s all you really know how to be good at what else would you brag about? I am a big bot who is good at being big and brutish and even better at not knowing what mercy is supposed to mean.

Just look at my  _ name _ . That’s a big title to live up to. I was a soldier. I was the warden of the most disturbing Autobot jail to have ever existed. I was strong. I was unbreakable. I was imposing. I was to be feared. I liked that. It was what drove me. It was what I needed to get up in the morning. 

Then I broke and I was about as scary as one of those fluffy white tailed rabbits that I saw once on Earth (just not as cute). I still have my size on my side I guess. And my reputation. 

The whole point is I remember everything that made me  _ me _ and I also remember everything that unmade me. When Overlord took over G-9 and I was tossed to the masses and then tortured and then chained to a friggin lock pick for three of the longest years I’m pretty sure anyone has ever experienced (minus maybe the couple bots that got stuck in that dead universe because from what I understand that was really messed up when it came to time perception). Anyway, if I never see another alpha numeric code in my life I’d be pretty okay with that. 

What am I supposed to do with those memories? For a hot minute they drove me to madness and I am still surprised everyone has forgiven more for that. Either way I realized I still have a want for the old. Fighting has been the all encompassing everything in my life and more than once have I realized that I have a tendency to be better at making war than anything else. 

It’s not really something I can just step away from when my base instinct is to punch anything I vaguely don’t like. When chaos is more peaceful to me and stillness is what drives my trigger finger to twitch. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fort Max is complex and I really wanted to get into his head more, but unfortunately it got a little too personal. He's a lot like Punisher- war is what he's good at and creating it is the only thing that makes sense to him and I know that sounds weird, but having been there and done that? Foof it's hard to write about.


	18. Red Violet

**Ravage**

I told Megatron I came here because Soundwave sent me and he did. He was worried and I didn’t blame him; I was too. Six million years of war and at the top of it all Megatron stood the villain to the majority. Six million years the antagonist against the Autobots who in this story were the “heros” and who “won” in the end.

That was all a delusion. No one won. On that day both Megatron and Optimus Prime disappeared and both sides didn’t have any other choice than to stop fighting. Bumblebee was too soft to take advantage of the Decepticon’s disarray and Starscream was too much of a coward to continue the fight like he should have.

So for a few days there was peace amongst total chaos until the Autobots took over and no one can tell me they didn’t. They weren’t the ones with explosive chips in their heads. They weren’t the ones getting assassinated by Prowl and Arcee or beat up in the streets or herded into the barrel of an old cannon to live like cockroaches in a dumpster.

We were the ones villainized for what we _would_ do at the end of the war and the Autobots became the villains they thought they’d won against. When Megatron returned, when he stumbled out of the wilderness, yeah he was a withered skeleton of a mess, but he was _back_. He was back and the Prime had abandoned his team and that was going to be our chance to turn everything around. The world’s most embarrassing loss was about to become the win to top everything.

And then… it didn’t. It just didn’t happen. I don’t know how or when or what; no one does, but all of a sudden Megatron was back and he was friends (?) with Bumblebee and the Decepticons weren’t important to him anymore. We fight behind him for millennia and all of a sudden none of that mattered?

Most of us were angry, I know I was. I was ready to eviscerate Bumblebee for whatever he did to Megatron to change him. I was furious at how he’d hurt Soundwave! Soundwave wasn’t mad or sad even, he was in shock. I’ve never seen him so confused before. It was like trying to explain the Chaos Theory to Shockwave; there’s really no words to describe the complete and utter disbelief at it all.

The literal inability to understand _why?_

All of that aside; everything that we felt that day when Shockwave almost ended the universe went on the back burner and we followed Megatron (and Bumblebee) because up until then he hadn’t led us astray. He hadn’t been wrong, he had never given up on his goal. On his dreams.

Then, silence descended and wounds were being healed and funerals were being held and we waited anxiously and then he walked out of that ship with _red_ on his chest and even I couldn’t bear the sight of it. I turned away. I turned my back, but Soundwave didn’t; he watched so carefully for any sign that this was all part of the plan and he didn’t get one. This was the plan and we weren’t part of it anymore so he asked me to go. Asked me to follow him; get the answers that Soundwave couldn’t. Asked to me try and understand.

So I watched from the corners and hid in the shadows. I overheard conversations and followed patrols around the ship. I had to steal rations in the dead of night and recharge in tiny corners that made my legs cramp up. I never made a peep and I was about to abandon the mission when the ship started to disappear and I had no choice but to reveal myself. The only comfort I got in blowing my cover was that Megatron seemed sort of happy that I was there. Maybe it’s because I was a familiar face or maybe he understood that the reason I was there is because Soundwave was worried. Worried and confused.

I decided to stay because that conversation in the cell on the replica Lost Light confused me. Stay and find out? Find out what? I’d been watching him since we’d left Cybertron so what else was there to see? Him getting more isolated? Him getting spat at behind his back? Him getting plotted against? Him becoming weaker and weaker day by day? Him dealing with everything that everyone else was dealing with- the aftermath of war and hate and fighting and hell- but only he had to do it alone?

No, I couldn’t watch that anymore.

Still, he wanted to stay and I had to stay with him. I couldn’t leave, not at that point. Good thing I didn’t leave because look at where he is now. Out there, in a bubble, ready to die for these bastards. Ready to get himself killed and half of me wants to say he deserves because Tarn is right. He abandoned us. He betrayed everything we fought for for so long, but the other half of me? Maybe the other half on the other end of this table… knows this is what he wants.

I wish Soundwave was here. So I could tell him what Megatron has become. That he’s somehow both greater and lesser because of the red stain on his chest and I can’t tell him not to be because I’ve watched him for so long. I saw him become what he became and I saw him change over the last six million years and he is _so_ different now than he was and he’s even more different today than he was yesterday and somehow I can’t say that’s a bad thing.

Not anymore.

I didn’t want him to change. Purple looked so good on him… _looks_ so good on him.

Red isn’t so bad either.

“Don’t… change… back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am pretty sure I will never be over this. Skids was one thing, Ravage hurt on an entirely different level. This is most definitely going to be the prequel to Megatron's writing. I've already started his and its a direct sequel and all the feels~


	19. Seeker

**Nightbeat**

There are only two things more infuriating to me than having to ask a question more than once.

One is getting an answer that only brings up more questions and more often than not, this is basically how everything turns out. Does Censere exist? Yes! He does! Okay so how does he do what he does and why? Okay he has a teleporter and does this because he hates the war. So why doesn’t he do something more significant? Why does he just write things down and plant flowers? Does he realize no one is going to ever see the outcome of what he’s doing? Right, he did do something more significant, he found one of Brainstorms briefcases (how in the hell did he manage to beat all odds and find that thing anyway?), he saved people so now people will see what’s become of his work.

Great. I have about a million more questions for him, but he’s not here anymore. Which brings me to the second thing that infuriates me. Questions that will never get answered because they just  _ can’t be _ . It could be so easy, but it’s actually impossible and that is so incredibly angering. There is always an answer out there; that’s what I tell everyone. I just don’t tell them that sometimes while the answer is real, it is also impossible to get. It will just linger forever, wherever it is, and that’s that.  

I don’t really know why I constantly hunt for those answers. A lot of people would peg me for someone who does logical things; I follow rational thoughts and come to normal conclusions to move on to the next clue of whatever I’m looking for.

But is someone who looks for answers for any other reason than ‘it would bother them if they didn’t’ really all that sane? That’s one question I am okay with finding later. 

I’ve found lots of answers over the years some I’ve like others, a lot of others, I have not. What if I don’t like the answer to that last question? What would I do? 

What do you do when you’re not looking for something? I might have a reputation as an answer seeker, but maybe that’s because I also have a reputation for questing after the absurd. How else would I have ended up on this ship? But at the end of the day everyone is looking for something. Everything we do is because somewhere along the line we asked a question and went to find an answer.

What does this day hold for me? I’ll get up and see. What does this person think about this topic? I’ll ask and strike up a conversation. You think they’ll want to hear this crazy story? Well we’re going to find out. What is this news article about? I guess I’ll read it. What is Rodimus after? Well I’ll hop on the Lost LIght and look with him. 

So far I’ve only found more questions than answers, but the way I see it is that this is going to be the best place to keep looking. Am I right?

Only one way to find out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is short and pretty poorly written cause I am super tired -_- worked 16 hours yesterday and I've got a hell of a lot more to clock in before this weekend is finished.


	20. The Obvious

**Getaway**

Let me make this very  _ very _ clear. I do not regret doing what I did. Not one bit. I did what I did because it needed to be done and no one else was going to take the gun and pull the trigger. That’s what I was literally born to do. 

I can’t say “Oh if I had only been brought online during a different time” or “If only I’d been taught otherwise then I’d have made a different choice”. I didn’t and I wasn’t so I’m not going to make up excuses. That’s how I was taught to think and that’s what I base my choices off of. Why anyone thinks I could be different is wasting their time because I’m not and I never will be. End of story. The past can’t be changed despite what some (now disembarked passengers) on this ship would tell you. 

What I managed to do was needed and I will not amuse anyone with an argument over the whys and hows. They were so obvious, so glaringly in your face, that if you couldn’t see the problems? Then yeah, you didn’t deserve to be here either. 

They were following around a captain that had a jump ship modeled after  _ his own head _ . I get second hand embarrassment just thinking about it! Everything we’ve been through in this war, everything we’ve seen and done and sacrificed and  _ that’s _ what you  _ settle _ for? 

No. No way. Not a chance in any hell, on any world, in any religion. 

And that was before Megatron joined the party. Optimus Prime pawning him off on us as extra baggage was one thing (and I’m not even sure pawn in the right word because it’s not like any of us would trade  _ anything _ for his presence), but then to make him a Captain? Make him our leader? I….what? How? How is that even  a thing? 

This guy, this war lord who killed millions of people and caused the extinction of entire planets and drew war out for millennia upon millennia, was now someone we were supposed to take orders from? I fought him and his legions for centuries! I was made to order because of his war mongering. I don’t understand how it can possibly be okay to just sit back and accept this. I can’t. It’s wrong. It’s wrong on so many levels. He was the most hated and vile bot to ever have existed in our existence and then, just because, he had a change of heart, it’s all okay? Oh, he changed his mind! That’s cool. We’ll just say he got past his “angry teenager phase” finally. Here, now take him on a life changing adventure! 

I know Rodimus didn’t have a choice in the matter. Even after we tried to oust him that first time Optimus almost did it for us with his ‘take Megatron or don’t be captain anymore’ ultimatum. Megatron was going to be leaving Cybertron with us one way or another and I wonder if, at any point, Optimus was hoping we’d just drop the evil bastard off on some inhospitable planet and lose the coordinates. I was hoping we’d do that and for a time I thought Rodimus might have gotten behind that plan.

Then he started, I don’t know, working with him. Like they were co-workers or something. They sat down together and made plans and then he started hanging out in Swerve’s and even Magnus walked to him like… like the last six million years were a thing that happened. The only reason Minimus ever became Ultra Magnus, the reason there was ever a Magnus after first, is because Megatron needed a force to reckoned with. 

But, sure, let’s take an anarchist onto a sacred journey to look for the Knights of Cybertron.

Yes, makes perfect sense. The one person in existence from Cybertron that least deserves to find them (if they should exist) is going to head up the search. 

Blasphemy on blasphemy on top of hypocrisy on top of more idiotic logic that literally make no sense. 

They had to go. They had to be left behind. They didn’t deserve to be on this journey. Megatron doesn’t deserve this chance and they lost their chances by befriending him. It’s the ultimate betrayal and you can say it’s my fault all you want. Yeah, I did some bad things along the way to try and get this started, but in the end?  I’m not alone in this matter. Never forget that. I didn’t start a rebellion on my own, that’s impossible to do. I asked a couple, very obvious questions, and got other people thinking. I made my points and left them to their own decisions. 

Even after all the stuff I tried to pull with Tailgate they still chose me over Megatron because what’s a couple desperate attempts to do what no one else is willing to do over creating our civil war? To being the reason our existence is like it is? 

I’m not the bad guy here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate Getaway, but I get why he did what he did. I'm more mad at some of the others that agreed to do it with him, but they all have pretty good reasons.
> 
> He's still an ass, though. 
> 
> Also hi! Thank you guys so much for the kudos and the comments! They really keep me going. I know today is the last day of the fest, but I'll be writing for a while yet since I have some catching up to do. This weekend was hell in a hand basket at work so I didn't have a chance to do much of anything.
> 
> I'll probably be posting a bunch tonight though!


	21. Shades

**Minimus Ambus**

We’re here in the eleventh hour and I usually have a lot to say about any given topic, but there’s nothing to say this time. There’s no statistics to go through and there are no questions to ask. There’s no right or wrong here. There is only the last couple of minutes until the sun sets on this forsaken planet and we march onward. 

Ultra Magnus has marched many times before. I have marched before. At the end of the day (which it almost is) this isn’t very different from the other final battles I adorned my armor to take part in, but it is different this time. It’s not that my armor is excessively larger (and this is the only time I will let Brainstorm’s need to exaggerate on his work go without a safety inspection), but it’s that I’m going into this battle, this  _ final _ battle as a different person, with different people, and under different circumstances. 

Everything is so different and for the first time I can say that it doesn’t bother me. I used to hate different. Change meant something somewhere wasn’t what it should be. Something wasn’t as it was and how I’ve always known it. Usually different meant a rule had been broke somewhere along the line. 

Unfathomable. 

Now? Well a few broken rules here and there aren’t the end of the world- in fact they might even be… necessary from time to time. Is that the right word for that? Necessary means it would be required or essential in order for things to be accomplished. Yes, yes that’s correct. With some twisted logic is was very necessary that rules be broken for us to end up here. I can follow the path of injustices all the way back to Cybertron when we devalued our whole justice system by allowing Megatron to go free. He outsmarted the system, yes, but at the same time we bent the rules so he would have to do that in the first place. 

Then he ended up on the Lost Light with the rest of us and we’ve broken an uncountable number of policies and rules… including the laws of space and time. (I would like to make it clear I was very much against that plan from the start). But if we hadn’t done any of those things then we wouldn’t be here, right now. Some would argue that would be better considering who is standing on the doorstep, but I on the other hand beg to differ. For once. Maybe for the first time ever. 

Where would we be if we hadn’t broken some of the rules (yes, including the time laws too)? We wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t have gotten this far, not even close. Let’s not even get into the fact that we were apparently always destined to break the solidarity of space and time by traveling back into history in order to create our own history. 

Does that mean I was destined to break all these rules? Were we destined to end up here, at the end of everything, because we went against logic and reasoning for once and tried something different? We decided to give Megatron a chance and, in doing so, we became the criminals. We were the ones worthy of condemnation. 

I’ve become everything I used to fight against. I used to run around the galaxy looking for anyone who even used a semicolon incorrectly and would lecture them for hours about why the rules are there and why we have to follow them and why they can’t be broke. Because back then if the laws were broken then more chaos would happen and everything was already in such a state of complete uncontrollability that a run on sentence was a tipping point into insanity. 

I thought there was never a good reason for breaking the rules. 

This time is different. This time we broke the rules for all the right reasons and I realize that sometimes there are good reasons for doing bad things. I’m not trying to justify every wrong that’s been done, but there’s something to be said when I manage to break out of the black and white and see some grey and others can’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He's still going to arrest Getaway when they find him, though. 
> 
> And then probably hunt me down for my atrocious grammar.


	22. Symphony

**Megatron**

Silence is terrifying. 

I’ve been so encapsulated by noise my entire life that now, when there is a moment of silent respite or quiet reflection I find myself wanting to scream. Scream the way I used to in the mines when I hefted my axe over my head and drove it into the rock. A solid yell between the clunk and chink of energy beams on metal walls and between the sounds of rusty carts being wheeled through echoey tunnels. Even at night as I wrote the tapping of my fingers on the datapad was enough to satiate my need for a background ticking. 

I want to shout like I used to in the pits of Kaon. An incomprehensible gurgle that would rise from my gut and send a shock of terror down my opponent’s spine. It would be the last noise they’d hear before I would listen to their body crunching and their spark sputter and go out with a high pitched hiss. The cheers of the onlookers and terrified gasps as they watched what raw power really looked like. 

I long for the deafening din of constant war. The battles of unprecedented chaos: screams amongst gunfire and shouts being drowned out by the clash of weapons. Cheers for victory and the anguished cries of defeat. Even in the time between battles it was never quite. There was always strategy to talk about and prisoners to torture. I was rarely ever alone and even Soundwave, quiet stoic Soundwave, there was always a reason to be talking when I was in the room. Shockwave wasn’t able to stand still without his hands tinkering at something and where there’s tinkering there’s noise. Then there was Starscream… well Starscream never shut up and I only made him stop when there was a need for my own voice to raise above his or when the noise coming out of his mouth was intolerably idiotic; both happened more often than not. Even then, he’d mumble under his breath. 

When I was alone, my dreams were never without violent nightmares. I’d replay the noises that had taken up my life until that point and I’d dream of the future and the orchestral concert of chaos that I would be conducting with a wave of my hand. 

If it ever got too quiet I’d find a reason to make noise because the only time I remember hearing silence, the one time the world went white and the shouts and screams around me faded from existence, I ended up with energon on my hands and a dead guard lying on the floor of the C-15 off world mine. 

Silence is deadly. 

It gives you time to think and the mind is a powerful thing. It has the ability to deceive others as well as yourself and the only thing in this universe that you cannot get away from is your own your memories and ideas and thoughts. It’s where you have revelations and wordless arguments with yourself. It’s where plans begin and it is where they plant their roots to bloom into a graspable reality.  It is where thoughts of rebellion filter into existence and how civil war is mapped out. It’s where delusions of grandeur start to form and where ego can take over your person. 

Noise keeps me focused. Or maybe it distracts me, I suppose it depends on your point of view. 

The Lost Light is never quiet and that is a blessing I took advantage of everyday. If it wasn’t Tailgate boarding through the halls or Brainstorm causing mayhem with some new experiment, then it was a late night crowd at Swerve’s or Cyclonus’ singing. It was Nautica laughing somewhere off in the distance with Skids. It was Perceptor talking someone’s ear off with one of his passions in science or Whirl reenacting a Wrecker story, fight poses and all. It was Magnus typing up another memo and Ten scratching art down wherever he could. 

It was Rodimus. Rodimus talking more than Starscream ever could and still managing to make more sense. It was him going on about the mission and about himself even more often. He’d talk about the crew and what he liked about each person on board and what they’ll do when the knights are found. How the universe will change and how excited he was for it.

Noise is ramblings of hopes and dreams and laughter and forgetting what’s behind or in front of us and it grounds us to the here and now. It doesn’t let our mind drift off into delusions or fall back into fears. It reminds us that life is noise and clatter and silence is death and nothingness. It is the beat of our sparks and the rushing of energon through our lines. It’s our shouts when we hurt and our laughter when we’re happy. It’s our joints cracking as we move and our feet stomping the ground as we walk forward. It is the reminder than we don’t walk alone. 

I’ll take crescendoed chaos for the rest of my existence. I never want to be in silence again. 

Silence is terrifying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah I love Megs and I had to finish this tonight or it would have bugged me to kingdom come.


	23. So Very Like Me

**Nautica**

Everyone on Caminus is outgoing. There are more leaders than followers and it’s an overwhelming clash of personalities for someone like me. I don’t want to stand out. I don’t want to be the leader of a group. I want to be able to spend time with people I like, but also be able to go and do my own thing. I want to read and study and learn. 

On Caminus, being a loner is frowned upon. You have to lead. You have to be loud and proud and stand out in the crowd (and that rhyme is probably the exent of anything accidentally artistic I can do). It’s not that I can’t stand out. I’m smart and can school almost anyone on science (Brainstorm and Perceptor aside, of course). I just don’t want to. That was never okay at home. It’s okay here, though. 

I am okay here. Wherever here is at the moment. 

Sometimes I wonder where I would be if I hadn’t jumped on the Lost Light at the last second. Only sometimes, because really I wouldn’t want it any other way. Everything became such a whirlwind when Rodimus and the rest of the group showed up inside Metroplex. There were things trying to kill us and then we were on Cybertron and who would have thought that place still existed. Then there were combiners and chaos and the war our ancestors had fled from was both still going on and ending all at the same time. It was so overwhelming and simultaneously it was so interesting and I wanted nothing more than to jump into the middle of it all and figure out the whys and hows and the whos. There was a lot to take in. 

Then, when the Lost Light showed up over the skies of Cybertron, amidst complete chaos, I knew all my answers were somehow hidden within its walls. I know that sounds silly, especially for someone like me who has always been more grounded; after all, I am a scientist at the end of the day (and don’t get me wrong, the fact that there were quantum engines attached to the LL definitely peaked my interest). All I can tell you is that I saw it and I thought about the people I already met who had come from it and that was it. I had to go. I know it surprised Windblade and Chromia a lot and I know when we met up with Firestar  and the rest of the Vis Vitalis she was pretty shocked. It was so very unlike me.

I am not very brave. 

At least I wasn’t. I think now I can say I am at least a little bit brave. My friends here, they showed me that it’s okay to be me and I don’t have to conform to whatever mold society has set for me. That made me brave; made me want to discover more about myself, those around me, and the universe. I was always the weird one out. Everyone is a little bit weird here. 

Instead of saying the things I liked were not okay Brainstorm let me into his lab. Instead of pretending I wasn’t an outcast Rodimus let me join him on their adventures, but he  _ asked _ . Instead of shunning me or pitying me Skids asked me to dance with him.

Skids… 

Really all of this is about him. He showed me all those things. The others did too, but Skids took my hand and we danced. We laughed. He taught me that acceptance was the mark of a real friend. It’s not that Windblade and Chromia weren’t my friends, but I have to be honest; I was always more of a lost turbofox trailing at their heels. They probably aren’t wondering where I am now. Not the way I wonder where he is. Not the way I wonder where we should be. 

I don’t regret it. Not at all. I hate that he’s gone. I hate that I will never be able to fill whatever hole is in my chest now that he won’t be here anymore. I hate that I want to cry and scream whenever I think about it, but I don’t regret it. He wouldn’t want me to. He wouldn’t want any of us to. 

I just wish he hadn’t felt so alone when he went. I wish I had told him everything I’ve written here. 

Really, though. Even though we ended up here and now, at the end of everything and my best friend is gone, I am so glad I got on the ship. I am so glad I met everyone. I am so glad that the adventures are going to continue. I feel so lost right now, but that’s okay. We’ll find our way. We always have in the past. 

I hope i can go home one day and surprise everyone there. I hope I can sit down and tell them all things I’ve done and tell them about all the people I’ve met. I want to show them everything that’s changed.

Because joining the Lost Light was so very unlike me. I’d never taken a chance by myself. I’d never left anyone behind on my own. I’d never been alone.

I am still not alone. I never will be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did another! I'll probably be posting these from time to time when I get the inspiration too. They won't be Lost Light Fest related obviously, but character studies and just random blargles. 
> 
> Nautica is hard to write. I was going to go for a more somber tone, but she's an optimistic person. She's upbeat, even when shes sad and scared. She says things that are meaningful. I don't know if I got that right in this or not, but I like the way it came out.


	24. Clean Slate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first (older) Decepticon. Also the first entry before MTMTE takes place. This was a suggestion from Tumblr!

**Scorponok**

They say that things grow brighter after a fire. That once the soil of earth is charred and the life that once roamed the land is dead and the planet life that rooted itself deep into the dirt is nothing but ash, _that_ is when life truly begins to flourish. 

So that is what I set out to do. I was going to purify Cybertron. I was going to purge it of the viruses it had accumulated over time. The weak links of data that were crawling across its surface. That scum was the reason Cybertron was dying in the first place. Flippant minds who didn’t want to stand up and fight for what was right. For what was wrong with our world. They would rather flee than flight. 

They disgusted me. So, we had to get rid of them. Letting them flee to the stars wasn’t an option. They could run all they wanted, but the truth of the matter was that they’d still be out there. We could fight for eons and eons (which we did) and they’d be out there for however long it took for Cybertron to recover and then they would come back and taint it all over again. It woudl start all over again.

Cybertron was never a world for the weak. It was barbaric, wild, and unforgiving at the start. Only the strong survived and our cities coddled and nurtured a defenseless and pathetic mind set. 

Of course the Autobots cherished these people. “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings”.

No. Not it’s not. Freedom is for those who fight for it. It is for those who have already made the sacrifices and dirtied their hands. It’s for those who are willing to take the risks and do the unthinkable. It isn’t for other to reap the benefits off of. 

It isn’t for those who would cower in the background of a storm and then relish in the sun afterwards after others were the ones laying the sandbags to keep the riverbanks from over flowing in the midst of everything.

We fought. We killed. We were the ones who sparked the revolution .We surged the crowds into action. I didn’t do the things I did so philosophers could stand above us all and say we were right, but not have ever shot a bullet into another. 

Megatron had the right idea. He had the right words and the right plans. Until he didn’t. Until he himself got weak. Before he started leaving the hard work to us and sitting in his throne and simply watching. He claimed he had everything planned out. He claimed he knew when to act. He claimed a lot. 

I never really liked him.

Unfortunately others seemed to. I had my moment in the spotlight. I had my moment as leader. Everyone knew where I stood; they know where I still stand. Not with him. I stand alone. I rage my own war. 

Ultimately Megatron’s sentimentality will be the ruin of him and his crusade.It will be the ruin of the Decepticons. He is fueled by memory. Pushed to speak out; yell anything that comes to his mind. He acts on passion.

Passion. Memory. Nostalgia. Those are the things that made Cybertron weak. Those are the things that will give the Autobots the win.

This is will not let happen. Just like last time; just like when I was able to gain control of the Decepticons I will wait in the shadows. I will let Megatron and Optimus Prime play their little war games while I plant my seeds. While I act towards the real victory. 

They can punch and kick and fight. 

I will wait. I will slowly gather my kindling and I will let the smoldering coals I have kept hot and alive all these years spark. 

I will watch it all burn.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did the thing! He's definitely not someone I’d ever consider doing on my own- admittedly all I know about him is from the IDW series, but I actually really like the way it came out! 
> 
> Really though, I just like getting into the minds of the bad guys. 


	25. Nyon

**Rodimus**

You know what sucks? Being a complete and utter failure. What’s worse is knowing it, admitting it, and then someone telling you you’re  _ not _ a complete and utter failure. Because it takes a really long time to accept your mistakes. It takes even more time to forgive yourself. So when you’ve tormented yourself for days and nights and weeks and months and years and then you finally get a peaceful nights rest, a day without wanting to hide in shame, it’s a touch of freedom. A release. Then someone comes along and says that all that suffering, all those nightmares, were for nothing.

And you know they’re lying.

Because these things don’t linger without a reason. This isn’t a misunderstanding. This is a learning experience. Don’t tell me I’ve been learning off of nothing because then I’ll have actually not learned  _ at all _ .

And you’d  _ still _ be  _ lying _ . 

Don’t get me wrong, I might linger on these things longer than others, but I think that’s because they forget where I come from. Where I’ve been. What I’ve done. 

And I’m  _ not _ talking about just “being Hot Rod” or the time during the war or the things that gave me my reputation that haunts me everywhere I go. Yes, I am the Hot Rod that royally fucked up his first mission as a leader and got his whole team killed. I am the Hot Rod that broke into the prison on Styx and broke out someone I thought was my friend who promptly betrayed me. Yes, I am the Hot Rod who never got along with Grimlock and the rest of his team. I am the Hot Rod who stayed behind on Earth to look for Sunstreaker when  _ no one else would _ (and I will never not be angry about that, trust me). 

I am also the Hot Rod that told off a Prime when he sat in a corner while his soldiers were being held captive. I am also the reason Ironhide died while trying to do something  _ good _ for once. I suggested we put our stupid differences aside when we were on Earth and work together to get away from humanity and the things they had done to us so far. I also made the mistake of working with Swindle. I stole Ultra Magnus’ ship, still one of my finer moments to be honest, even if I was running from myself more than my allies, and chased after the Matrix that everyone seemed pretty okay with leaving in Starscream’s hands. 

I was the Hot Rod that carried that damn Matrix. Although, I guess I shouldn’t be too angry about people not knowing about that. I’ve haven’t told many people the details about that weird trip with Wheelie and those I did tell I definitely didn’t give them the whole story. 

I tell people I never want to be called Hot Rod again, but honestly? I kind of miss it. Yes, Hot Rod was reckless and egotistical (more so than some would argue I still am) and yes he made way more mistakes than I do now, as Rodimus. Hot Rod was also the one that looked back on those mistakes and learned and grew and changed. Rodimus hasn’t changed very much.

But let’s get really real now. 

Hot Rod was the one the pulled the trigger back in Nyon. 

_That_ is what people forget. That is the line that everyone seems to forget for me. To them, my story starts with a vague retelling of me shooting at Orion Pax’ team to me being in the academy to everything else that followed. 

Let’s all just forget the thousands of lives I took with the push of a button. I don’t blame them. I don’t, but I do. It’s an ugly side of me. It’s literally the worst thing I’ve ever done and, let’s be real, I’ve done a lot of awful things since then. I’ve made more bad choices than I can ever keep track of, but that... Nyon wasn’t a  _ bad choice _ . It was the right choice. Right for what was necessary at the time. 

It is the reason I might have more flowers growing around my pedestal back on Censere’s planet than any other Autobot out there. I don’t know for sure, I didn’t go look. I couldn’t. But Optimus never blew up an entire city, that much is for sure. It would have eaten him alive and I’m not just saying that to make myself sound  _ better _ or more badass. It’s the truth. He wouldn’t have been able to pull that trigger.

I did. I did and that’s where I come from. That moment is what made me Hot Rod and that Hot Rod is who made me Rodimus. Now Rodimus is this weird ambiguity of a bot who knows where he comes from when the rest of the world has forgotten who he was. 

Now I’ve forgotten a lot about myself over the years. I’ve forgotten because everyone else ignored it. Going to Censere’s made me remember. The idea of just how wide my blue field expanded out to the horizon made me remember. Megatron, of all forsaken bots in this damn universe,  _ Megatron _ made me remember. Working with him, talking with him, watching him made me remember the streets I came from. Made me remember the streets I burned because he burned his streets too. Because he and I are much more alike than I would ever admit to anyone out loud.

Hot Rod was the bot that destroyed the city he was born in. He is the bot that has always believed in Primus and the All Spark and Vector Sigma (before I saw it in person) and never pushed it on others. He is the bot that grew up in a city of religion where temples were abandoned and life was anything but easy. He was a bot that gave his all to help the homeless. Who helped anyone he could because he had to have a reason for living. Who became a leader before he became an Autobot. Who was personally approached by Megatron to join the Decepticons before Orion Pax had even heard the name Hot Rod. Because I was out in the world making stuff happen. Seeing things as they really were. 

I wasn’t hiding under a rock or denying things to make it easier for myself. 

I’ve been around the block more than once. I’ve been  _ around _ a hell of a lot longer than anyone ever wants to admit. I might not be as old as Ratchet or Rung, but I’m not  _ young _ . I know I’ve fumbled. I know I’ve messed things up more than once. More than normal and for awhile I was listening to everyone. I listened to their lies. They told me it wasn’t my fault. That it couldn’t have been helped and when I believed them I forgot who I was. 

Hot Rod never listened to anyone. He changed.  Rodimus might have listened too much. I need to stop listening. I need to start learning again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha! I can still write! Been in sort of a slump. Leave it to my favorite little Hot Rod to get me going again. 
> 
> I always wondered why no one ever brings up Nyon. Aside from probably snapping Rodimus in half...it's still a significant part of him and who he is. Who he was. He probably thinks about it every day.


	26. Jump

**Pharma**

Let’s talk. 

Let’s talk about you and me. Let’s talk about how things got to the way they are.

Actually let’s not talk about that. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I wouldn’t know where to end. There really is no end, actually. It all just keeps going and even though the cliff was jumped off eons ago, the abyss below doesn’t seem to have a bottom.

So here I am, free falling to Primus knows where (not literally of course, although I did fall off a cliff that one time) and… well I didn’t really have an end to that analogy. I just always liked cliffs. The idea of an endless everything. Maybe that’s the philosophical part of me. Maybe that’s the flier in me. Maybe that’s the crazy everyone says has taken over. 

I don’t know. I don’t care. They can think what they think and say what they say and I am going to keep plunging further, and the further down I get, the more on top I will be when all is said and done. Because the more I dig the more I learn that no one else has learned. The more I see and feel and think. The more I come to both love and hate this universe that we live in.

_ I know everything you don’t know~ _

Is that really something to be bragging about? Well, yes. Tyrest asked me once what I would do once I knew everything there was to know and I told him that I’d find more. There’s always more. This universe doesn't just  _ sit _ there. It expands. It grows and changes. It forges new life and kills that which has been around too long (not much longer for us then, huh?). There’s new wars and old ones that fizzle out, new weapons and new tactics. New illnesses and new cures. New gods and religions. New races. So contrary to popular belief (and by popular I mean like, the three people I’ve had contact with these past few months) there is no limit to knowledge. 

You can never truly master anything. 

So why bother living like there is a point to anything you’re doing? Play a game that has no point. Try to prove a point just to be able to point out there isn’t one. Just do what you need to do and have fun with because that’s all you’re going to get in the end anyway. 

This point is there is no point to this. No, not  _ this,  _ but  **this** . If you could see me gesture around it would be more clear. This as in the universe, the galaxies, the worlds, the room you’re sitting in right now. There’s no point to  _ you _ or me or a rock and you can look in every corner of every nebula and you are  _ never _ going to find one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sort of really love Pharma. Like a lot a lot. I also love getting inside his head (if you couldn't tell by my excess of writing that includes him).
> 
> Thanks for reading =)


	27. For the Fall

**Springer**

They say that the universe always gives you what you deserve. I’m not sure if I believe in just deserves or that Earth thing, karma, but it’s hard to deny that somehow, someway, everyone ends up getting what is coming to them. Some get the good pay outs and others get the bad paybacks. Sometimes it’s really fitting, other times it ironic, and every once and awhile it makes no sense. Usually because you don’t know what that person deserved in the end because you didn’t really know who they were, no matter how long you stood by their side. 

Sometimes it looks like the universe is really out to get someone. Giving them one bad hand after the next when they don’t seem like a bad person or haven’t done anything worthy of all the bad luck that plagues their daily life. Then there are those that are the most vile people this universe has to offer and they reap all the benefits. They get everything they want and they sit back and watch the innocent burn. 

Then there are those like myself. I’m not a good person and I’m definitely not a  _ nice _ person. Not at all. But all the things I’ve done I’ve done for the betterment of others, my world, and hell, the universe at times. I did what needed to be done, when they needed to be done, by any means possible so others wouldn’t have to. 

That’s what I tell myself, at least.

It’s true in all the ways that it is also untrue because I’d be a lying bastard if I didn’t admit that I  _ liked _ doing all the things I did. You can’t watch that much energon spill and not get some sort of joy from it. If you didn’t like it you wouldn’t be there, end of story. Who knows, maybe I didn’t like it at first, I don’t remember to be honest; that was a long,  _ long _ time ago. You just sort of get used to the killing and lying and brutality that envelopes every last aspect of your personality. 

I took action and maybe that means that I’ll get some sort of recompense for it. Maybe I already had my comeuppance. A lot happened while I slept. A lot of bad things that I’m pretty sure I could have fixed. A lot of death I might have been able to prevent. A lot of deaths that didn’t happen that I could have made possible. I came back to find half my friends either dead or insane and the universe a more twisted place than I left it and I’m not sure if I can handle thinking about that on a daily basis. 

Yeah I’m pretty sure this is my “karma”. I did a hell of a lot of bad and then I blink and suddenly, years later, I get to look around at all the shit that happened when I was useless and can’t fix. It’s like being on one side of smelting pool while your friends are drowning and the only hope in saving them is on the other side, but your aerial mode is broken and you can’t drive fast enough on your tires to make it in time. I am alive and capable, but I see the pointlessness of it because I wasn’t gone very long, but it all went to hell so what’s the point in trying again? When I’m actually gone for good it’ll all have been for nothing. 

So, yeah, this is my purgatory.

Shit sucks. 

But you know what? I’m not in hell yet and I know I’m going to get the chance to really prove to the universe what I deserve. I like doing what others refuse to do. Sure, I’ll get my hands dirty so you can sit in your safe space and deny any involvement. It means I’m made out of tougher stuff than you. It means I’m more willing to do what needs to be done. It means I’m willing to take action instead of pulling the strings to marionettes like some coward of a puppeteer. I can pull the trigger when you can’t and I  _ love _ it. 

It makes me remember that when all is said and done, that I’ll get what I deserve because I did things that deserve payback. I look forward to meeting you in hell and seeing your perplexed face, wondering why you ended up in the same damned eternity as me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Springer is actually my twin on, and off, the battle field.


End file.
